Toki and Subara – Enemy Mine

Saki 11 had more of Teru going wild, Subara’s ‘sacrificial pawn’ one-liner that had many Japanese fans swoon and Toki realizing that yes, the nationals make you do crazy things.

It also had Toki and Subara stopping Teru’s East 4 dealer turn.

How the two team up and give it their all for a common goal is nothing short of beautiful. First of all, Subara proves herself the best prepared for her match against Teru. Sitting as the next player after the champion, Subara decides to pon her way to victory. Of course, it’s not like she just got a hand full of pairs to begin with and went with the flow – she had to aim for pairs and triplets to begin with, throwing away her sequences. Why pons? Calling a lot makes both her hand and the general flow of the game easier to read for both Toki and Kuro, which is not without meaning. But more importantly, each time Subara calls pon, Miyanaga Teru loses an opportunity to draw a tile. If Subara pons on Toki’s discard, the order ‘resets’ back to Subara’s turn and Toki gets an extra draw. If Subara pons on Kuro’s discard, both Toki and Kuro get an extra draw. If you count in the discards Subara salvaged for her own hand, she gave team Teru Busters ten tiles of advantage while the champion was just sitting there, unable to do a thing. With four more draws to her hand, Toki is finally able to outrun Teru to a tsumo – this is what Toki refers to when saying that Subara‘allowed her to win.’ And Subara knew this is what she has to do from the very beginning – as she says, she has no choice now that she’s South to Teru’s East. It’s not something you can do with every hand, not even something guaranteed to prove effective every time, but it was a tactic that a powerless human came up with against one of the most powerful probability manipulators of the Saki universe, and it worked. My respect, Subara sempai.

Of course, the reason the tactic worked so beautifully this time around was because Toki was out there being awesome, too. Playing into Subara’s pons while advancing her own hand could be compared to tightrope walking while juggling burning sticks, a feat so fiendishly difficult it seems simply impossible for an ordinary person to accomplish. Then again, Toki is not even close to being ‘ordinary’. Two turns ahead – the power that brought the Senriyama Ace to the brink of exhaustion ideally giver her pon / not pon information on eight different tiles ahead of time – that’s almost a fourth of the entire tile set! And all the while, Toki gets exclusive info about the tiles that will and won’t come on her draws, further accelerating her own hand. With the double boost provided by Subara’s tactics and her own ability, it is no wonder Toki was able to break through the stream of Teru’s endless strikes.

And yet, this victory was not what Toki really wanted. Sorry Shindouji, I couldn’t see your last tile. And what does Subara do in response? She flips her last remaining tile face down. It doesn’t matter. That was marvelous.

Now, hiding a losing hand before shuffling for the next hand is nothing uncommon. It’s often considered bad manners to brag about your would-be winning hands, and there’s usually little reason to give your opponent more info about your playing style than necessary. But just as discard do, this simple action can have deeper significance in Saki. Kajiki Yumi wordlessly hides her one-away from tempai kokushi musou hand that could have been the key to her victory over Saki and Koromo. Nearly winning doesn’t count. Hisa flips her tiles face down before Saki can draw her winning tile in their Individuals match, already knowing what’s to come and admitting defeat. That’s as far as I go.

Subara doesn’t know exactly how Toki’s ability works, but she understands enough – ‘Sorry, I couldn’t see your last tile.’ Onjouji Toki wanted to play into Subara’s hand, but couldn’t. Was one of the tiles in my winning hand the one Shindouji needed to go out? That’s the question lurking in Toki’s mind as she claims victory. Not her victory, their victory, even if the heartless point totals say something else. But Hanada Kirame understands. She flips her last tile down and buries the answer to the question in darkness until the match is all over and they go their separate ways. It doesn’t matter. That was marvelous.

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I also love how Subara acknowledges Kuro’s contribution. Even if she never wins and can’t keep up strategically, she still does her part for the coalition just by being herself and being there. For all her power, even the great Miyanaga Teru can’t draw dora in Kuro’s presence.

Yes, Kuro herself isn’t quite aware how much she’s contributing to their joint survival. I think people would be less hard on her if she displayed a “that’s all I can do, but I’ll bear with it” attitude, but there are also people who love seeing Kuro troubled…

And it’s interesting that Teru doesn’t negate special abilities with her mirror. Her ‘drawing power’ is just ridiculous, so she can win regardless of what’s happening. But that also means she’s stoppable… sometimes.

Teru’s dominating, eccentric playstyle seems to have upstaged her mirror (winning streaks as a signature move?!), but I still find the mirror fascinating. She doesn’t need pure, oppresive probability manipulation like Koromo’s to dominate. While she may still warp probability, she also immediately adapted her strategy to handle dora-free hands against a player who sees one turn ahead — no mountains of play records or hours of analysis and scheming required!

If Saki can get through to her and bring us a kinder, gentler Miyanaga Teru, then I’d love to see her play against Stealth Momo. Momo’s ability is one of the few the mirror WOULD negate, but it means so much to her when people notice her and know who she is.

As far as I can tell, Saki’s the only one who’s ever been able to reliably stop Teru’s winning streaks — and she probably did it frequently. If the breaks were rare, Teru would ramp up to high-point hands and Saki’s few winning hands would have to be massive for her to hit +/- 0…and she’d never won with a yakuman. Of course, it’s also quite possible that the whole family’s made up of superpowered mahjong monsters.

I’m inclined to believe even Momoko’s presence-related ability would not be negated by the mirror. It hasn’t negated a single ability so far, and episode 12 proves the mirror doesn’t ‘update/refresh’ as the match goes along, so Teru doesn’t have any reason to see Momoko’s tiles.

Just as you say, the moment Teru sees deep into Momoko’s soul, the girl is likely to get a heart attack – Kuro reacted strongly enough, and her presence isn’t as important to her as in Momoko’s case. But once Teru has ‘perfectly understood’ Momoko, the match would go on normally, with Momoko disappearing around South 3 of the first hanchan, as she did against Saki.

This is not to say that Momoko would achieve any degree of success against Teru. Teru’s mirror + probability manipulation provides her with a ‘surefire strategy’ against her opponents, and beating Momoko is easy enough – tsumo or ron before she can complete her hand. Momoko’s ‘drawing power’ is average. There’s little fear of her getting rons off other players, either – Toki and Subara were trying to intentionally play into each others’ hands all the time with little success, why would Momoko have better luck there?

Actually, the moment Momoko disappears, things would get really, really ugly. The keyword in a fight against Teru is ‘information’. Momoko’s discards becoming invisible would lead to other players dropping like flies against Teru with a third of their safe tile information taken away.

Well Momoko might not mind getting second.

Replace Subara with Momoko in this match though, and I pity Kuro. Two players who don’t get ronned at all and one whose defense is poor…

There’s the question of whether she’s using any special ability here at all. Is her ability to “never go below zero” always active, making it increasingly difficult to take away her points the closer she gets to zero, or does it activate only in the hands where there is a real possibility of her going below zero, smashing that possibility against all odds? I lean towards the latter interpretation, contributing Kirame’s defense to her own tactics, and seeing her power as an “if all else fails” backup plan.